Just This Once
by ingrid-matthews
Summary: [Post LYBDII] She sits on the corner of his tiny desk, legs crossed, balancing like a lazy bird on a wire.


Title: "Just This Once"  
Fandom: BSG, for the "Inner!Tiger" Challenge,  
Pairing: Six/Gaeta -- Rated R for sexual content  
Spoilers: Post LYBDII - takes place during the New Caprica Occupation  
Summary: Like birds on a wire ...

**Just This Once  
by ingrid**

0o0o0

Gaeta is doing exactly nothing, trying his hardest to make it look like it's something when he hears _her_ screaming.

He doesn't raise his eyes to the President's chamber door. He doesn't have to. He's heard them fight before, her calm poison-ice tones, his frantic rebuttals, rising in crescendo until something slams ... a door, his head.

Gaeta's never heard her scream before though and he wonders with a half grin if she's going to kill him this time.

Not that Baltar deserves such an easy end.

He doodles some more on the file marking the end of the alleged crimes of one of the countless dead. He turns the person's name into a series of inky triangles before starting on the clean folder front. Soon there's a rising swirl of circles, a tree of death maybe, and he's almost to the tip of the avenging sword when the Six storms out of Baltar's office, her eyes rimmed red.

She's been crying and Gaeta wonders if she can rust, but he doesn't look up at her. There's a hitch to her breathing and he calmly turns the file over, pretending to have finished his work.

Opens a drawer, pulls out another useless file and he's mastered this pantomime enough to have timed it almost to the second _they_ usually get bored and leave, but she doesn't go, choosing instead to start sobbing again, practically bathing his shoulder in tears.

It's hard not to make a face at her, but he's worked for Tigh long enough to remain relatively impassive. "Can I help you?" he asks, crisply. He taps the folders into a tidy pile.

She laughs bitterly. "Can you do something with _him_?"

Gaeta pauses, waits, before glancing up at her. His tone is perfectly even. "What exactly would you like me to do?"

The Six looks taken aback and her throat works as she swallows. "Nothing. I mean ... I don't need anything right now, thank you, Mr. Gaeta."

He doesn't reply. Instead, Gaeta turns back to his imaginary work, knowing that as she walks out, her gaze is having trouble leaving his back.

0o0o0

The next time she approaches him, she's dressed in tight red velvet, her eyes as cool as ice. She's put on fresh lipstick and impossibly high heels, showing off the shape of her perfect calves. Her hair is freshly done, each golden curl curved in a precisely careless wave, cascading around her inhumanly beautiful face.

She sits on the corner of his tiny desk, legs crossed, balancing like a lazy bird on a wire. "So what do you do for fun?" she asks, with playful venom in her voice. "I can't imagine the real Felix Gaeta finds such satisfaction in all this ... mundane living. Honestly now, what is it that turns you on?"

He waits a very long time before answering. He waits until ... until he sees her wobble on her perch, which she does. Eventually. "I like living," he answers, staring off into the space between his desk and the President's door. "Is there anything else?"

It could be a question, it could be a dismissal. Either way, she doesn't seem satisfied. "Living is overrated. I've done it a dozen times or more. It doesn't get any more interesting as you go."

"I'll meet the alternative soon enough, I suppose," he shrugs and rises. "If you'll excuse me ..."

Her long fingers reach out with shocking speed and strength, grabbing his chin and holding his gaze to her own deadly one. "I know you," she hisses. "Don't think I don't, because that would be a lie."

There is no fear in his eyes, he knows there isn't, because he feels none. He feels exactly nothing, except the vindication of truth. "You don't know me. At all," he replies, not unkindly, and tilts his face out of her suddenly weakened grip. "Now, if you don't plan on killing me or using me for something, I have to be going."

Her frown is a cross between sorrow and rage. "They don't love you. We could love you, but you ... you don't let anyone near. Anyone. Why? What _do you want_?"

Gaeta laughs. For the first time in months and keeps laughing as he exits _Colonial One_, the freezing mid-fall air turning his watery eyes red with tears.

It's the one occasion he's allowed himself to cry since the day he left the _Galactica_.

He thinks it's only time he'll allow himself to cry, ever again.

0o0o0

It's a few days later and human whores are in Baltar's bed again, probably invited when he was drunk. Gaeta has to give him credit for balls, because a Centurion's blades are sharp and most Cylons don't like being made fools of, at least not twice.

But this Six takes a lot from him, forgives him a lot and Gaeta thinks she loves Baltar, which is as disgusting as it is amusing because he once suffered under the same, pointless delusion.

When he finds her, she's slumping in one of the ship's leather chairs, listening to the noises coming out of Baltar's bedroom. She's wearing an old pair of sweatpants and a slack t-shirt, her hair pulled back into a messy ponytail, no make-up anywhere and for the first time Gaeta has to admit she isn't quite as unattractive as he usually finds her.

A thought hits him and he quietly makes her a cup of hot tea. Hands it to her silently and the shocked look of gratitude she gives him makes what he's about to do almost bearable.

The Sixes are machines of seduction. Their programming is almost exclusively sexually inclined and if this one has a bit of sentimentality in her ...

He might need a friend later on. _They_, the ones who fight, might need her later on.

Even if she doesn't know it.

"It's not easy, is it?" he asks, tilting his head toward Baltar's room. He pulls a chair up and on calculated impulse, takes her slim hand as he sits. Soon, he's running his thumb along her surprisingly rough knuckle, just as if they've been friends all this time. "I know how you feel. I was once like you."

It has the effect he hopes for as the teacup rattles in her other, trembling, hand. "What do you mean?"

"Wanting something that was bad for me," he says with a meaningful look. "So I don't blame you. Not like _they_ do."

Alluding to her constant arguments with Three seems to brighten her and Six sits up, squeezing his hand. "It can't be helped, can it?"

"No, it can't. Love is something no one can help," he replies, softly, gingerly moving his thumb up to her wrist and if what he thinks is true, it won't take much more. At least, he hopes it won't, because he doesn't have that much left in him for these kind of games. "Still, that doesn't mean we can't find solace ... somewhere."

"Somewhere ..." she whispers, gasping as he takes a chance of a lifetime, to lean in and gently take her mouth.

The tea splashes to the carpeted floor, the cup cracking in half.

It's time, he thinks, putting his hand on the back of her neck and reeling her in, kissing her desperately, because this might help in the long run and because it satisfies him in ways he doesn't want to think about. Very soon, she's gasping under his mouth, taken in, opening like a flower for him, tasting deceptively sweet.

He slips off her t-shirt with ease, cupping her breasts roughly and she fights not to make a sound, but he urges her on. "Come on. Come on. Just this once ... " he growls in her ear, pulling her onto the well-worn rug, tugging down the sweats, tangling her panties in his thumbs. "Just this once -- why can't it be us?"

"Oh God," she moans, fighting out the pants and only partway succeeding. She's neither graceful, nor particularly beautiful, but she's certainly sexy and he can turn his mind off, closing his eyes as he works himself between her legs, first with his mouth and fingers, then with his thighs, hastily uncovered, pants down only to his knees.

She's squirming and _mewling_ with pleasure as he pumps mindlessly into her, pouring out all his frustration and fury, his tightly clenched eyes hot, but dry as a desert.

_No more tears_.

She orgasms violently, clutching around him and he allows himself to come, feeling surprisingly little pleasure. Maybe it's been too long or he really doesn't care anymore, who knows, but the pleased, satisfied look on her face makes it worth it in the end.

He assists her in pulling together first, a small courtesy that receives yet another grateful look.

Vaguely he wonders if Baltar -- or any of her lovers, for that matter -- have ever helped her dress afterwards. He guesses not, because Sixes don't seduce nice fellows -- they seduce men of power and men of power don't get that way from being good at putting clothes back _on_ women.

Gracefully, she rises from the floor, her dignity fully returned. He zips himself up and once standing, they examine each other as two creatures who've just concluded a successful business meeting might -- with a pleased, but wary expressions.

It's at that precise moment Baltar emerges from the gloom, half-naked and reeking of tobacco -- and sex. "Oh, you're back," he says to the Six, a mixture of disappointment and fear in his voice. "Sorry, but I'd thought you'd gone for good."

He looks exactly like a weasel, Gaeta thinks. He ignores Baltar and says to Six: "If that will be all ..."

"Yes, thank you, Gaeta," Six replies coolly. She smiles at him. "I can't tell you how much I appreciate your dedication to your work."

It's a joke, the first one shared with a human in all of Cylon history perhaps. Gaeta doesn't laugh, but nods curtly and takes off to his meager sleeping quarters in the back of the ship.

Later, he sneaks back to the front cabin to listen at Baltar's door and he hears her, moaning Gaius' name and a warm, not-exactly shameful spread of satisfaction settles in Gaeta's chest, where before there was nothing but hopeless dread.

He returns back to bed, and sleeps without dreams.

0o0o0

She catches him after that, catches him in the Cylon databank, taking a code, less than a week later.

Gaeta's very sure he's dead. He knows she can snap a human neck with a mere twist of her slim arm and he waits for death patiently.

Her arms slink around his neck, but instead of tightening, he feels her lips against his ear, breathing soft words. "Just this once."

She's gone before he can stop shaking and it takes all his presence of mind to shut down the program and flee the data center.

He's still not sure he isn't going to be gutted by a Centurion, but he returns to Colonial One anyway, where she sits, drinking a tall glass of ambrosia and reading a book, her ankles folded daintily across Baltar's lap.

Baltar orders him to do something the minute he appears, grumbling around a cigar and Gaeta listens mindlessly, not daring to meet Six's eyes, but she saves him the trouble by looking up and smiling sweetly. "Whatever would we do without our Mr. Gaeta, Gaius?"

"Huh?" Gaius squints at her, before following her eye level. "Oh, yes. He's very useful. Even more so when he's gone from here doing what I've asked."

"Yes, Mr. President," Gaeta replies numbly.

He leaves to do whatever it is Baltar ordered and it's not until he's wandered far, to the very edge of what's left of their brave new world that he breaks down completely, unashamed to sob openly, letting the tears fall against cold fists.

Just this once.

0o0o0

end

All reviews are very welcome.


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